Article December 24, 1910 Issue

Not merely one of the world's great women—one of the...

Los Angeles (Cal.) Express

Not merely one of the world's great women—one of the world's great personages passed away when Mary Baker Eddy died in Boston Saturday night. She must be adjudged great if measured only by the extent of the influence she exerted over the minds and lives of men and women over all the earth. That influence was world-wide and strongly potent in its workings, guiding and controlling the views of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of exceptionally intelligent disciples. Whether her long career be regarded with reverent consideration or in hostile criticism, friend and foe must unite in the judgment that places among the group of the world's great, this woman, whose body now lies dead but whose spirit still strongly lives.

The change that men call death came softly and painlessly after four score years and ten of life devoted to the search for truth. Her search ended where all life begins—in God. Death found her work complete, her mission ended, her service fulfilled. The way she pioneered, the path she found, now runs broad and smooth to the feet of all who believingly follow. She made God easy of approach to hosts of men and women who, losing faith, else had not known Him. She gave vitality to belief, direction to aimless purpose, ideality to life, new sanctity to truth, supremacy to Mind, healing to the body, and did her part in bruising the serpent's head. It was a great creative work that Mary Baker Eddy achieved in an age when faith had begun to depart and belief to darken.

It is too early to measure the scope of her achievement. Although for years she has lived in retirement, perspective still is lacking. It is not in this generation or the next that it will be possible in the judgment of men to assign her to her rightful place. The work she did endures and will endure. Her teachings survive. Death has no power over truth. The church she founded, losing a founder, yet has lost but a member. It remains unhurt, the embodiment of principles, not a creation dependent for vitality upon an individual. While it continues faithful to Truth, and combative of error, a medium whereby increasingly is established the unity between life and God, it cannot die.

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